You will, I trust, remember that in my last Lecture I urged two objections against the common doctrine of Atonement. The first was, that it is based on the personal deity of Jesus Christ; I do not say on his divinity simply, for this is a vague phrase, and may be used by those who understand by it little more than a certain high degree of inspiration and divine co-operation; but I say his personal deity,-the doctrine which makes the Virgin Mary in good truth the Mother of God, and which altogether justifies that very obnoxious phrase, "the blood of God," which I suppose there are few in the present day who are unwilling to exchange for what seems to be the better authenticated reading, "the blood of the Lord," that is of Christ. Without doubt, the tendency of thought among Christians at present is to sharpen the line of distinction between the human and the divine in Jesus. And I shewed you (by what I cannot but think an unanswerable argument) that if Jesus, in his human nature, has intelligence, will, consciousness, and such like attributes (as all now admit), distinct from those of the divine nature, he must be a person in his human nature, by the same argument which is used to prove the Holy Spirit a person. Whence it must follow that Jesus is either two persons, contrary to all ecclesiastical authority and to all scripture, or that he is only a human person, wonderfully assisted by the Deity.

The second objection was, that proper vicarious punishment is highly offensive to the instincts of our moral nature, and ordinarily but ill adapted to answer the ends of government. I distinguished between vicarious punishment properly so called, and that which is only improperly and figuratively so called, contending that while the latter is of every-day occurrence, the former is universally repudiated; and always has been, with the rarest exceptions. Indeed, you heard from the late Robert Hall, that "among the well-attested records of judicial authority we have no instance probably of any person who was himself innocent and upright, being admitted as a substitute in behalf of the guilty." I admit that in the improper sense of the word our Lord suffered a vicarious punishment, but maintain that there is nothing in those texts wherein Jesus is described as bearing our sins," "dying for us," "giving his life a ransom for us," and such like, which requires any one to go beyond this. As one who has become bondsman for another, and who may be put to great losses and sufferings in consequence, and even made the inmate of a prison, owing, it may be, altogether to the roguery of him whom he wished to serve, may therefore, and in a valid sense, be spoken of as suffering for the fault of his treacherous

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friend, and even as being punished for it, and instead of the guilty party, so may Jesus be truly spoken of as having borne our sins and died in our stead. So far I am willing to go; so far, I believe, Unitarians in general are willing to go. But they do not think such passages as I have now quoted require them to go farther, and, not requiring it, they feel that they ought not to go farther, so long as vicarious punishment, in the proper sense of the word, continues to be so repugnant to the natural instincts of the human mind, and as a general rule is allowed to be inadmissible in all governments.

It becomes, then, a question of great interest and moment, what are the considerations which lead so many good people to interpret Scripture in this objectionable sense? What is the reason that, not content with the improper, they insist upon it that in the proper sense of the words Jesus suffered a vicarious punishment for us? The common answer is found in the word Justice. Divine justice, it is said, requires that, punishment having been threatened, it should be inflicted: whence it is supposed to follow, that if the guilty themselves are pardoned, the punishment must alight on some other. My business this evening will be to examine this plea; and I choose as a motto for the discussions which are to follow, those words of Paul, "That he might be just, and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus." They occur in the third chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, and at the 26th verse.

There is nothing on which my friends who hold the common doctrine are more ready to plume themselves, than on the regard they pay to Divine justice. Unitarians, you say, sink the character of the Lawgiver and Governor in that of the Father. Yours is the honour of maintaining both. This is supposed to be the crowning glory of the doctrine you so highly value, that it preserves unsullied the justice of God, which you boldly say is tarnished on every other scheme but your own.

And yet my friends are not agreed among themselves as to the nature of this justice whose cause they espouse so warmly. This is no nice metaphysical point, of no practical moment. For our views of the nature of the atonement required will very much depend on our views of the justice that requires it. It is possible that some of you have never troubled yourselves with this question; and perhaps are hardly aware that two opinions may be formed on it, and are formed on it in the Evangelical denominations-opinions which issue in a wide divergence, and constitute, in fact, a rent in the foundation of the popular doctrine, which even now threatens its overthrow.

Justice, considered as distinct from rectitude in the general, is usually described as that which gives to every one his due. It is commonly distinguished into two kinds, commutative and distributive. "The former" (I here quote from the Encyclopædia Britannica)" establishes fair dealing in the mutual commerce between man and man, and includes sincerity in our discourse as well as integrity in our dealings. Distributive justice is that by which the differences of mankind are decided according to the rules of equity. The former is the justice of private individuals; the latter, that of princes and magistrates."

In distributive justice, moreover, a division is usually made by theologians between the remunerative and the punitive. It is remunerative, as superintending the distribution of rewards; punitive, as superintending the distribution of punishments. In this latter sense it is

sometimes called vindictive, or rather vindicatory, as having to do with the infliction of punishment, and the vindication as well of the law from insult as of the holy character of God from misapprehension and reproach.

Now this, the vindicatory, is the justice to which the old divines were wont to represent the sacrifice of Christ as having been offered. And to what other justice, or form of justice, could they have represented it as having been made with greater reason? If the pardon of transgression threatens injury to any one of the Divine attributes, surely it must be to this, which is concerned in giving to every one his due, and that particularly in the matter of punishment; for the pardoned sinner plainly does not receive his due. If, therefore, justice in any form requires satisfaction, one would think it must be in this.

But against this notion Unitarians have ever argued, that distributive justice does not admit of substitution. It consists in giving to every one his due; that is, his own due. So Socinus argued, so Dr. Priestley, and so the Unitarians of the present day argue. And it must be satisfactory to those of my hearers who have long borne the Unitarian name, that, after years and centuries of stubborn controversy, this point is at length conceded by writers occupying the highest standing among the living advocates of atonement. One is Dr. Wardlaw, from whose Discourses on the Nature and Extent of the Atonement the following extracts are taken. They occur in that part of these Discourses wherein he is discussing the question, In what sense was the atonement a satisfaction to Divine justice?

Accepting, then, the ordinary definition of justice, as that which gives to every one his due, he remarks that it has been divided into (he makes four sorts) the vindictive, the commutative, the distributive and the public. The first of these, however, he altogether excludes; and, distinguishing it as he does from punitive justice, he excludes it rightly. "It does not," as he says, "merit the name of justice." It is rather revenge, which can have no place in God.

There remain, then, according to him, three forms of justice-the commutative, the distributive and the public.

Of these three, the first, he says, the commutative, "is that which subsists between a creditor and his debtor, and has reference to commercial transactions. In such cases, if the debt be paid, no matter whether by the debtor himself or by a surety, the claim of justice is cancelled, and no room is left for any thing which bears the nature of grace or free pardon." "Nothing has been remitted. There is nothing to remit."

"The second, the distributive, has regard, not to pecuniary or commercial transactions, but to moral conduct, and to the desert thence arising of reward or punishment. According to it, the transgressor must receive in his own person the due recompense of his deeds."

The third, or public justice, he describes as including "those great essential principles of equity, according to which the Sovereign Ruler governs the intelligent universe,-those principles which bear relation to the great general end of all government, the public good."

Now he says, and says truly, "The question is of no trivial importance in which of these senses, or under which of these aspects, Divine

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justice should be regarded, when we speak of it as having been satisfied by the atonement." "I would say," he subjoins, "not in the first, not in the second, but in the third."

Not in the first, the commutative, because satisfaction in this sense would "cancel claim" and "leave no room for the exercise of grace." Besides, “sins are debts only in a figurative sense." "A debt of property may be paid by another, a debt of obedience never can. It is in its very nature intransferable."

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Neither," says he, "does the idea of satisfaction by substitutionary atonement bear application to justice in the second acceptation of it. Distributive, or, as others designate it, retributive justice, according to its strict requirements, ADMITS NOT OF SUBSTITUTION. It issues a righteous law with a righteous sanction. It passes its sentence against the transgressor of that law. It makes no mention of any possible satisfaction but the punishment of the guilty themselves, the endurance by them of the penal sanction in their own persons. It is only by the death of the sinner himself that the proper demand of the law can be fulfilled, that the principles of distributive justice can have their due application, and that, under this aspect of it, justice can be satisfied. According to the requisition of justice in the distributive sense, every man personally must have his own due. But in substitution it is otherwise. There is an inversion of the principles of strict retribution. Neither Christ nor the sinner has his own due. The guilty, who, according to these principles, should suffer, escapes; and the innocent, who should escape, suffers. In no strict and proper sense, then, can distributive justice be satisfied by substitution, when its demands, instead of being adhered to and fulfilled, are for a special purpose, and by an act of Divine sovereignty, suspended, superseded, overruled."-Pp. 52-58.

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Now, what will Unitarians say to these statements? Here you find principles conceded to you for which you have long fought, through evil report and good report (though with how little of the latter, in comparison with the former, I need not say). Here are these principles conceded; and that by one, than whom no one occupies a more conspicuous place in the Independent denomination, and none of that body enjoys a wider fame beyond its limits. They occur also in a work, the advent of which was attended with wonderful flourishes from the accredited organs of that denomination, as embodying the clearest statement of the nature and extent of the atonement" that one writer "had ever seen," and as presenting to another "the most accurately scriptural and thoroughly philosophical view of the subject that is to be found in our language.' "It is," says the eulogist, "the precious product at once of matured views and matured judgment; and as such it will be appreciated by the generation to come. And what are these principles? Why, that no atonement has been presented which makes it otherwise than optional with God to pardon sin; and that justice, in the proper sense of the word, does not admit of substitution. Nor are these concessions those of Dr. Wardlaw alone. They are to be met with in the works of other writers; as, for instance, in that of Dr. Jenkyn on the Atonement, President of Coward College, London, a work which in 1842 had attained to its third edition; and also in the very masterly Lectures delivered by Mr. Gilbert, in the year 1836.

But, not to spend any more time in remarks of this nature, I proceed to observe, that against this theory of atonement, as being an offering to public justice, there rises up what at first sight seems to be a very formidable objection, and which is urged with pertinacity by those in the Evangelical ranks who still follow the old standards. The objection is, that public justice is only another name for wisdom, employed in conserving the general good. The fundamental idea of justice consists in giving to every one his due. This is plainly expressed in the general definition which Dr. W. accepts. But if distributive justice (to say nothing of commutative) was "suspended, overruled, set aside" in the transactions of Calvary, then justice, properly speaking, was not at all satisfied by these transactions. It was rather sacrificed, and that, as it should seem, to considerations of utility.

Dr. Wardlaw has not, that I am aware of, any good answer to this. However, his deficiency is amply compensated by the far more searching and, as I presume to think, more philosophical Lectures of Mr. Gilbert; though, it must be allowed, the supplement only removes the favourers of what I must call the new Evangelical school still farther from the old. However, it is necessary to their theory, as I trust to make you all clearly see before I have done. Mr. Gilbert, then, says that "justice binds only to beneficiary claims;" whence it follows that punishment is not at all owing to an offender against the laws, who, if it were, would gladly relinquish his troublesome claim. It is owing to the community of which he is a member; and to the community it is a good, though to him it may be evil. It is manifest, I say, that the theory of Dr. Wardlaw wants this principle for its completion; otherwise, it must fall under the objection named.

But there is one who was beforehand with Mr. Gilbert in the announcement of this principle. Socinus, in his tract De Servatore (Part iii. c. 1), lays it down as clearly and decidedly as Mr. Gilbert, and that in reply to the same objection, namely, that not to inflict punishment when it is due, is to violate justice. "It is false," he says, "that punishment is owing to the culprit in any such sense. Punishment is owing, not to the criminal, but to the state. When, therefore, a judge acquits a guilty person, he acts unjustly, not in respect of having withheld from the criminal what belonged to him, but in respect of having withheld from the State what was due to it; whose interest it is that the guilty should be punished. But if the State is willing to forego the claim, then no wrong is done any way in liberating the offender."

Now let us turn to Mr. Gilbert. My extract from him will be long, as indeed are those which I have already made from Dr. Wardlaw. But the value of the concessions made by these eminent men to Unitarian theology will, I trust, sufficiently excuse me to one part of my audience. For the other, I trust to the assurance they must feel that I do not misrepresent my authors by broken extracts.

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"Divine justice," says Mr. Gilbert, as a personal attribute, is that rectitude of the Divine nature by which his judgments and acts are ever in harmony with the relations of things, as well morally as intellectually. Our references, however, to Divine justice, are usually to its operations in connection with a moral system. In this view, I think we must adopt the definition of Leibnitz and other continental divines, which is, that justice is a modification of benevolence.' It is good.